


He didn't die ?

by Insomniacfuelledbycaffeine



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17876756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insomniacfuelledbycaffeine/pseuds/Insomniacfuelledbycaffeine
Summary: -author has a problem with additional tags they just... won't... add...-- No beta we die like men -If he managed to conjure Five, Klaus knew that his father would finally be proud of him (stop bringing him to the mausoleum), and his siblings would finally acknowledge his power, and of course he would be able to see his dear brother again after so much time.But that plan would work only if Five was dead.And was Five dead ?





	He didn't die ?

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe my phone is lagging it doesn't let me add additional tags I am so sorry I usually scream like a dumbass there but now I can't
> 
> I just binge watched Umbrella Academy, I'm gonna watch it again, and I love both Klaus and Five with all my dying heart
> 
>  
> 
> ISTANBUL WAS CONSTANTINOPLE NOW IT'S ISTANBUL NOT CONSTANTINOPLE

He’s awake.

  
There is no light. He doesn’t like darkness, but he has to accept it for this once.

  
Just for this once.

  
Eyes wide open, hands on his lap, back against the wall. It feels safe, knowing that behind him there is only a wall, a hard wall, one that won’t fall and won’t let anything attack him from behind. Klaus Hargreeves feels light headed, floating in the blueish moonlight and lukewarm black matter around him.

He’s waiting.

  
Waiting for the ghosts.

  
They scare him, yes they do, and his stomach is tight with a strange anticipation because he knows, he knows that tonight, things could change. As the darkness around him starts to shift and expand over the cyan shadows on his covers, as breathing becomes harder under strangling, as cold fear drips on his face and slowly makes it way to his shoulders, as the knot in his stomach tightens, Klaus knows.

  
He’s ready.

  
Right before the figures start screaming his name he narrows his eyes and gets ready to spring out of his bed, mimicking the way Diego liked to be before throwing a knife. He mimics it, because Diego can control his powers, and right now Klaus wants to control his powers, and some strength in his mind tells him he will.

  
Just for tonight.

  
“Can you not scream please ? I need your help !” he whispers, scared of waking his siblings up. The ghosts close their mouths, hover in a bizarre and kind of awkward way in the darkness for a bit. Klaus allows himself a smile through the buzz in his light light brain because he doesn’t feel scared, doesn’t feel like in the mausoleum at all.

  
He called them. They aren’t jumping on him because he _called_ them.

  
 _-Yes ?_ One of the ghosts suddenly asks, voice normal all things considered. The figures, Klaus realizes, look more and more human, more and more normal, and for a second he wonders if he isn’t conversing with normal humans.

  
He kinda is.

  
“I’m searching for someone, could you help me find him ?” he asks, words thick, rolling out of his mouth. The ghosts stare a bit more, all ghost-like, then one of them shifts.

  
 _-Why should we ?_ We’re not your friends, kid ! They growl, form extending as if it was going to become one of those shadows that so often attacked him in the darkness. Klaus flinches, ready to go hit the lamp on his bedside and make them go away, but another one raises their hand.

  
 _-He is the only one who can see us. He didn’t do anything._ They remark. The boy sighs, but the angry looking ghost doesn’t calm down.

  
_-He didn’t do anything to help us either !_

  
_-He kinda can’t._

  
_-Then how dare he ask for something ?_

  
_-Oh, shut up._ Klaus watches the figures argue, eyes wide and head blank. He didn’t know what to think, what to do, because this was not usual. The ghosts weren’t screaming, he wasn’t scared, his name hadn’t been said, and they were actually listening to what he wanted.

  
Controlling his powers seemed suddenly very bizarre.

  
Klaus let’s them argue a bit more, too scared to intervene, and ponders his options a bit more. He could let them chose what to do, or cast them away (but they might linger and scream and scream and screA-), or switch the lights on and say bye bye to his goodnight and his plan.

  
He shudders. He can’t give his plan up. This was the first time he was strong enough to call them like this. He did try before; except he gave up after a few seconds, or didn’t turn his night lamp off at all because of the mausoleum.

Tonight was different, because today something had happened.

  
Klaus remembers very clearly the events of this morning, the events that were pushing him to call the ghosts. He could remember very clearly indeed the way Vanya had stopped eating, startling her siblings, remember the way she had started staring at her plate with a sudden interest.

Maybe, he had thought, maybe she noticed that the food was very pretty. But then she had raised her little head and stared at the empty chair at the table (nobody was allowed to even look at that chair) and her little lip quivered and her little eyes shone.

  
“What is it, Number Seven ?” their father had broken his own rule of not speaking at the table, which had made Klaus snicker on the moment, because Vanya hadn’t yet-

  
She hasn’t yet raised her eyes at the painting on the wall, and she hasn’t yet let sloppy tears down her cheeks.

  
When she had, though, he had stopped laughing.  
And when she had spoken, all air had been knocked out of his lungs.

  
“It has been... exactly a year... since Five ran away.”

 

 _-Kid, are you listening_ ? Klaus blinks, his eyes adapting to the darkness, and looks up at the nicest ghost. _We are going to help you. Just tell us who you're looking for._

  
The boy can’t suppress his grin this time because he was controlling his powers and the giddy feeling suddenly filling him from tip to toe pushed aside his fear and- “I'm looking for my brother ! Not genetical, but I mean, he has lived with us and he ran away one year ago and I don’t know if he's alive so I’m searching for him here ! His name is Five !”

  
The ghosts stare at him awkwardly, and share a few sideway glances between each other. _We can’t promise that we'll find him, then. Since maybe he's alive._

  
“Yeah maybe, but he's been gone for a year. And he’s like 14. So I doubt that. But he is pretty smart.” Klaus excitedly blabbers. In that moment, he doesn’t mind if Five is alive or not. Because if he wasn’t, that meant Klaus would see him ! And if he was, then Klaus would keep on missing him.

  
So maybe it would be better if Five had died, after all.

  
Yeah, that sounded about right.

  
He waits, butterflies in his stomach, smiling like an idiot; he could use his power ! He was able to control it ! He felt ecstatic, his original purpose forgotten, the only thought that remained being his merry victory.  
He was high, high, high. His father would stop saying he was useless and would stop sending him to the mausoleum. His siblings would acknowledge his strength. He could even help Vanya communicate with Five, and she would stop being so sad !

  
_Please, Five ! Do me a favour and be dead !_

_-Sorry, we couldn’t find him._

  
“What ?”

  
Klaus trips, drops, falls, it hurts. “What ?”

  
_-Your brother is still alive, Klaus._

  
“No ! He has to be dead ! I want to see him !” a sudden fury, sudden pain, sudden fear creeps back in. “I don’t wanna go back to the mausoleum !”

  
_-Aren't you glad he is alive and fine ?_

  
“No ! No I’m not !” Klaus jumps on his bed, screaming, “He has to be dead ! I WANNA SEE HIM NOW !”

  
If he couldn’t see Five then he was useless and he was scared now because his efforts were in vain but Five was alive ? Was that good ? No ! If Klaus couldn’t see him then he was alive and nobody knew where he was so this was all for nothing !  
His father was not going to believe him saying he had spoken with spirits because he had no evidence, no Five to help him prove it. He was going to be sent back to the mausoleum and it would be all dark again and-

  
The boy kicks the wall, slams his fist on the light switch. The ghosts are gone; not that he cares now, and he slumps down. Dread, he feels dreadful, because he had just-

  
He had just said he wasn’t happy because Five was alive.

  
Five was alive and he wasn’t happy about it.

  
He missed the asshole so much and wanted to get out of his own nightmare with such a fervent need that he wished the dead of his own brother. His own brother. Klaus had never been too close to Five, because he was an annoying prick who always knew more than anyone, but in the meantime, he was his brother. And that night when he slept with Klaus because the latter didn’t want to be alone in the darkness after a particular rough training day meant something, right ?

  
This wasn’t good.

  
He looks at the light switch, sighs, hits his head on the wall. Groaning; he hadn’t been very kind to the ghosts, they were probably very mad at him. He could hear their whispers, wind flowing in his bedroom, cursing and screaming his name.  
Klaus was losing it. And he couldn’t go ask help from a sibling; not from Luther, not from Allison, not from Diego (all three hated him), not from Ben (He was sick), and not from Vanya (She was...)  
And not from Five either. Cause he wasn’t dead.  
He laughs weakly at the irony- Klaus couldn’t miss a dead person because he could see them whenever he wanted. Klaus missed people who were very much alive, gone somewhere far far away, running too fast for him to catch up.

  
Guess he would sleep with the lights on, then.

 

\-----

 

  
“This is ridiculous, Number Four ! You haven’t been able to shut your lights down and you are 14 ?!”

  
“But- dad-“

  
“Shut up ! Get dressed now ! No talking, follow me !”

  
“DAD !”

 

He’s hungry when he’s thrown in the mausoleum, and for the first time he’s more preoccupied by his rumbling stomach than the ghosts screaming around him. He’s still crying, no more no less.

 

He missed Five a lot more than expected.

 

\----

 

  
“What are you doing ?”

  
“Searching for Five.”

  
Ben, or the ghost of Ben, is sitting on the corner of his bed and is curiously staring at him. Klaus’ eyes are closed, he's waving a chalk in the air, letting out occasional annoyed noises out of his pinched lips.

Ben blinks, frowns, puckers his lips.

  
“You're high, aren't you ?” he asks suddenly, disappointed. Klaus opens one eyelid, and his face splits up in a grin.

  
“Not much.”

  
“Five would never come see you, especially if you were high.” Ben deadpans, arms crossed. His brother makes a mockingly hurt whine, finally opening both eyes. He throws the chalk in his hand violently across the room, smashing a “family picture” in the process. “Why the chalk ?”

  
“Five liked writing weird stuff on the walls.” Klaus slurs, falling down on his bed and covering his eyes with his arms. “With chalk. So I thought he might pop up and steal my chalk to make a graph on the wall on why I’m an idiot or something.”

  
Ben laughs, letting his hand pass through the shattered picture still on the wall. “Ghosts can’t touch stuff. But you’re right; it’s a very Five thing to do.”

  
His fingers go through the exact spot of the impact-

  
Klaus starts laughing too, stumbling into hilarity, a certain delirious laugh he had made himself a few months ago. He rolls off his bed, ends up on the floor, laughs and laughs and laughs, broken kid on the floor. His tears soak the carpet and his giggles make his small frame shiver and jerk like a puppet someone would shake around in mere amusement. Ben stares at him, smile gone, because none of this was funny.

  
The impact on Fire’s head is a funny spider web, with spots of white chalk around it. “You have a good aim.” The ghost remarks, turning around. The very much alive boy raises his head, wiping tears away, droplets clinging to his cheeks. He suddenly grins madly, grabs another chalk on his bedside table and, with the same violence, throws it at the picture. It goes through Ben in a split second, and makes a second bigger impact on the picture.

  
The sound of shattered glass echoes in his bedroom.

  
Thin lines crack the eyes of small Klaus Hargreeves. There is chalk dust on the hair, nearly turning the brown into white on the picture.

  
Making him different. Like Five was, like Vanya was (without even being on the picture), and like Ben was.  
But Ben's portrait was still very clean through the glass, smiling proudly.

  
The ghost stares at the two spider webs, then back at a grinning Klaus. “Oops, wanna say that thing about my aim again ?”  
Ben stays silent.

 

\------

 

  
“Five ?”

  
The small raise of eyebrows is an answer Klaus didn’t think he would get. Five was back, he wasn’t hallucinating, the boy was really here, still small and still looking like...

  
...the prick he was.

  
“You're really here ?” Klaus asks, blinking. His brother rolls his eyes at him.

  
“Very funny, Klaus.” He answers, haughty as ever. Yet there was something different in his tone, in the way he quirked his eyebrows, in the way he crossed his legs and the way he sipped coffee. His very blue eyes meet his - they are vibrant, they are alive – and the now taller sibling gasps. “No, seriously, do you have a question ?”

  
“Well, not really, but,” he grins lopsidedly, propping his head on his hands, “I thought you might like to talk with me since we haven’t seen each other in what ? 17 years ?”

  
Five blinks. He doesn’t smile. “More for me.” He puts his coffee cup down. Klaus has to rub his face with his palms a bit more, grin still on his face.

  
“You know what ?” he asks, voice heavy with all the alcohol he had consumed previously.

  
“You’re drunk ?” Five answers, unimpressed. Klaus laughs, throws his head backwards.

  
“Well, yes, but no ! Not my point!”  
“Then what is your point ?” the kid snaps, now glaring. Number Four feels queasy now, but alcohol is drowning his brain and he feels like speaking.

  
So he talks.

  
Talks to him about that night he tried to conjure him, that night when he said he wished Five was dead, that day with the ghost of Ben and all the things in between when he tried to reach out to him, or what was left of him, with all his might. In the end, he's sobbing, tears spilling like words and like alcohol all over the place, half trying to hug his brother and half pulling himself away because of all his thoughts. Five doesn’t move, staring at him with an unreadable expression, and eventually sighs.

  
“What, you’re deceived ?” Klaus laughs, hitting the table with his hand. “You got every right to be, but I missed you ! And I mean, things started going really bad after you left. Like, worse than when you were here.”

  
Five nods once. Then twice. Then he lowers his head, raises it again (which does count as a third nod) and looks at Klaus. He is Five, but at the same time he’s not Five, because even these serious eyes couldn’t match those of a 13 year old.

  
Shouldn’t match those of a 13 year old, at least.

  
He seems lost in thoughts, and Klaus fears he won’t answer and get up and leave again. But he doesn’t, he just drinks his coffee and smiles – not like Five’s smile, an old man's smile, a forced and tired smile that doesn’t reach his pained icy blue eyes.

  
“I see.” He finally says. It hurts both of them, so they are silent, but he lets his head fall of to his right shoulder, then chuckles in an exhausted way.  
This was not Five. But Klaus wants to know him again, because he came back for them, right ? And he was back, right ? He was back ?

  
“You really think I would draw an entire graph to prove how much of an idiot you are ?” Five asks, smirk fitting his face perfectly like some old cloth Klaus had seen on him way too often and he could recognize from a mile away. Smirking back, he leans closer to the small old kid.

  
“Yeap. That’s a very Five thing to do.” He proudly repeats Ben's words (his ghost brother huffs), and his alive brother stares at him with wide eyes for a few seconds, before his mouth gets lopsided and weird, so Five lowers his head with some choking laugh before passing a hand in front of his eyes. He seems to struggle to breathe, yet looks back at Klaus with a strained and worn-out smile.

  
He looks like a candle, nearly all burnt out, but what was left of all the beeswax was boldly staying upright with the tiniest flame on top of its head, laughing in the face of the world because it was still there, even when every law of physics dictated that its life wouldn’t last.

  
Five sniffles, sighs, “Very Five thing to do, huh ?” He laughs, something blocking his throat from producing a decent sound.

  
Klaus decided he would keep the candle bright and suddenly laughs. “Are you crying ?!” His brother jumps on his seat, frowning in a betrayed way, sudden delicate smile gone.

  
“Absolutely not !” He wipes his face, grabs his coffee, gets up. “I’ve lived through so much, I don’t even know if I can cry anymore !” He loudly affirms, pointing his cup accusingly at Klaus who roars in laughter, rolling over the sofa. “And stop doing that if you don’t want people to see your genitals; you’re wearing a skirt, at least pay attention !”

  
“How do you know that ? Have you ever worn a skirt ?”

  
“Irrelevant.”

  
Five spins around on his heels and leaves a hysteric Klaus alone in the big living room in which the former’s portrait was now uselessly glaring at anybody walking nearby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks I hate this
> 
> 7 pages (on Microsoft word)  
> 3023 words  
> All on Thursday 21st February (exactly one month after my birthday hahaha)
> 
> I'm also on Tumblr as onefrenchcappuccinoplease and you bet my sick ass got lots of stuff to tell about this show DAMMIT


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